Questions from our readers: Do people who smoke crack have abnormal personalities?

Image via Wikipedia

If a child grows up seeing this behavior they will mimic it

 

That is a difficult question to answer, if you mean does their personality become abnormal as a result of using crack, then the answer is, yes. Crack does have the capacity to take any person and literally convert them into a stranger, even to those who have known and loved the addict their whole life. Because the addict is now driven day and night by an urge he/she can no longer control, their mind is incapable of staying stable and rational. They may become severely agitated, paranoid and violent towards anyone, including their own loved ones and friends.

If you mean do people with abnormal personalities smoke crack to begin with, well, crack has infiltrated families and taken hostage many a "normal" person. However, that being said, there are certain predispositions that experts claim are hereditary that makes a person more prone to become an addicted person. It has been argued that it isn't a genetic factor as much as it is an environmental conditioning of the addict that causes them to be prone to become addicted.
The environmental conditioning argument suggests that the addict has perhaps grown up seeing substance abuse within the family, and because this is a familiar behavior to them they do not see it as the problem it is. This same argument has been made with childhood obesity, its the familiar behavior that the child mimics, over eating, and regular fast food meals is a behavior, not a disease, with overweight being the symptom of the behavior. The same is said for the addict, they grew up seeing substance abuse, and the behavior is mimicked. This type of environmental pre-conditioning occurs all over the world and  also is at fault for domestic abuse as well.